GROUSING 



35 



capable of taking three parties each day for the first three 

 weeks of the season, there will often be twenty or more 

 couples of dogs in the kennels, and in establishments like 

 this it would be really impossible to do away with that true 

 friend to the grouse — the keeper's whistle. On small moors, 

 however, where two or three couples of dogs with one keeper 

 will do all the work, it is an easy matter to abolish it, if insisted 

 on, though but few keepers will at first like being deprived 

 of their favourite instrument. For three seasons we had the 

 small shootings of Ardconnell at Oban, and broke and worked 

 our own dogs. One brace of setters was the whole strength 

 of the kennel, so therefore they had an amount of time and 

 attention bestowed on them which it would not have been 

 possible to give to some fifty or sixty dogs. The whistle 

 was never used, and rarely even had the voice to be raised, 

 as these two dogs were broken to work entirely to hand ; 

 so thus even when grouse and blackgame became very wild, 

 in November and December, a certain number could yet be 

 killed over them. It is well known dogs are so clever that 

 as soon as they know their master they understand his very 

 look, and we know some "doggy" men who can actually flog 

 their dogs with their yoices. 



Speaking of small moors recalls to mind an experiment 

 tried at Ardconnell, apparently with considerable effect. For 

 a small shooting there was a good head of game ; it was only 

 2,300 acres, and Sir Charles Booth with the author had it in the 

 years 1868-69-70. The second season it yielded a hundred 

 brace of grouse, a hundred and twenty-five brace of black- 

 game, and a hundred and seventeen brace of partridges, with 

 a considerable head of various ; but it is only on the three 

 first-mentioned varieties of game that the experiment had any 

 bearing. Happening to be at Oban in the middle of January, 

 1870, there was a very heavy fall of snow following on a hard 

 frost, and thus it lay longer than usual on the West Coast. 

 During this period it was impossible not to notice how pressed 



